Doctor wins in court: Meta must take much stronger action against deepfakes
A German court sees Meta as having a much greater duty to combat deepfakes, which is likely to have a signal effect.
(Image: Skorzewiak/shutterstock.com)
People like the physician and science journalist Eckart von Hirschhausen repeatedly see their own faces in videos that they themselves have never been involved in. Such clips are also known as deepfakes and were created with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Von Hirschhausen has now achieved a major victory at the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court (OLG): The court obliged Meta to remove not only individual postings of such videos, but also, without being asked, all further postings containing the same or similar videos.
As a medical doctor, von Hirschausen can give medical advice, and as a science journalist he has a high public profile in various media and at his lectures –, which probably made him attractive to the creator of a deepfake advertising video for a weight loss product. With the help of AI, the perpetrator generated an appearance by Hirschhausen that never existed and in which Hirschhausen supposedly advertises the product. The clip quickly made the rounds on social media, where it was posted far more than once.
Meta was hardly willing to help
Then von Hirschhausen began a tiresome journey: Facebook parent company Meta removed the video after being notified, but only deleted an almost identical one after being contacted again, as the media magazine Meedia reported. In a legal dispute, the doctor wanted Meta to refrain from distributing all videos with the same content, but was unsuccessful in the regional court.
However, he has now succeeded in enforcing his request: In summary proceedings, the Higher Regional Court ruled that a provider who has been notified, warned or sued about a rights infringement must automatically and therefore actively take care of other similar rights infringements on its platform and delete them, according to the law firm SKW Schwarz, which represented von Hirschhausen in the proceedings.
Jurisdiction as with the "KĂĽnast meme"
The court ruled that posts with identical text and images, but also with a different design in terms of resolution, size, cropping, use of color filters or similar, were "identical in meaning". Even if typographical characters are changed or elements such as captions are added that do not change the message, the piece remains identical in meaning. Captions are short descriptive texts that are included or added to a social media post.
With this decision, the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt continues the Senate's case law on the "KĂĽnast meme", but also takes into account the EU's Digital Services Act, which has since come into force, and formulates the aforementioned "active review obligation" for the first time, according to SKW Schwarz.
Videos by heise
Ruling with a signal effect
Von Hirschhausen's lawyer Götz Schneider-Rothhaar is delighted: "The decision is a fantastic milestone and breakthrough and it will very likely have far-reaching consequences for many celebrities and other rights holders in all creative industries," the law firm quotes him as saying. "In future, if a service provider knows about a deep fake or possible other rights infringements, it can not only be warned for a fee for similar content that it has not already actively deleted from its platform. Those affected can also sue directly, claim damages and possibly even compensation," he explains.
The ruling could have a signal effect for social platforms and other victims of deepfakes: "This is because there are significantly more opportunities to claim against service providers for rights infringements than before," says Schneider-Rothhaar. Meta can no longer appeal against the ruling.
(nen)
